20th century japanese culture
20th century japanese history
A01=Simon Partner
american occupation
asian economics
asian history
Author_Simon Partner
business leadership
Category=JB
Category=KCZ
Category=KND
Category=KNXN
Category=KNXU
Category=NHF
consumer culture
consumerism
cultural studies
electrical goods
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
export government policy
industrial economics
japan
japanese consumer
japanese electronics industry
mass consumer society
matsushita
ministry of international trade and industry
social change
sony
study of the east asian institute columbia university series
toshiba
Product details
- ISBN 9780520219397
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 05 Jan 2000
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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"Assembled in Japan" investigates one of the great success stories of the twentieth century: the rise of the Japanese electronics industry. Contrary to mainstream interpretation, Simon Partner discovers that behind the meteoric rise of Sony, Matsushita, Toshiba, and other electrical goods companies was neither the iron hand of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry nor a government-sponsored export-led growth policy, but rather an explosion of domestic consumer demand that began in the 1950s. This powerful consumer boom differed fundamentally from the one under way at the same time in the United States in that it began from widespread poverty and comparatively miserable living conditions. Beginning with a discussion of the prewar origins of the consumer engine that was to take off under the American Occupation, Partner quickly turns his sights on the business leaders, inventors, laborers, and ordinary citizens who participated in the broadly successful effort to create new markets for expensive, unfamiliar new products.
Throughout, the author relates these pressure-cooker years in Japan to the key themes of twentieth-century experience worldwide: the role of technology in promoting social change, the rise of mass consumer societies, and the construction of gender in advanced industrial economies.
Simon Partner is Assistant Professor of History at Duke University and author of Saying Yes to Japanese Investment (1992) and Mergers and Acquisitions Manual (1991).
